Photography: Karan Kapoor
For someone whose strongest suit is talking about dysfunctional relationships, Shakun Batra’s obsession with order is surprising. We’ll have to go back and forth in time to understand this contrast. The other day, when we began our virtual conversation for his latest drama film, Gehraiyaan, I was first asked by Shakun to position my camera more aesthetically because it was being recorded by the Amazon Prime Video team. He apologised just seconds later for his OCD, but that is where the contrast lies. He is known for bringing a sense of complexity, sensitivity and realism to Indian stories, but his style of cinema is so understated.
In his first film, Ek Main aur Ekk Tu, an uptight architect (Rahul played by Imran Khan) loses his job, and following a night of debauchery, accidentally marries a free-spirited hairstylist (Riana played by Kareena Kapoor). However, the chaos actually ensues when Rahul develops a one-sided attraction towards Riana, which threatens to ruin their new friendship. They both don’t exactly know what they want and find themselves at crossroads in their own lives. His second film, Kapoor & Sons, was a portrait of human frailty — about our flaws, our wounds, our losses, our resentments, and our regrets. A family reunion that soon turns sour. Old scams scrape and the hurt in their hearts spill over. We spoke about his restlessness with the creative business, new film, and new mediums. Excerpts below.
How would you describe Gehraiyaan?
It’s a modern, complex relationship drama. I mean, those are the most simplistic words that I use.
What was the starting point for this film?
I felt like we’ve seen too many oversimplified ideas of love and relationship, and it was time to deal with something more complex, maybe messier, and see what that turns into.
You spent quite some time with the script alone because when you first planned to go on floors, we entered our first lockdown. Did it evolve during that time?
I feel time is always a great friend for a creative person. You want more time with things, but it also sometimes makes you overthink. But I think in this case, I would say fifty percent of it was useful. Thirty percent of it was just me getting anxious and ten percent of it was maybe anti-productive. But yes, for the most part, it was a gift.
What is the importance and meaning of relationships in your world?
In my own personal life, sometimes, I tend to find it very hard to show my emotions and I can get overwhelmed with handling relationships, but with films and storytelling, I feel they make for a great place for me to compensate for my feelings. They allow me to see them differently; investigate them differently. In real life, people are too close, one needs to step back and understand what’s going on. However, you don’t always have the space and time to analyse. In stories you get that time, you get that space. You can make people shut up if they’re talking too much or you can make them shout your viewpoint or against your viewpoint. So maybe I do look for answers about relationships in my films more than I look for answers in relationships in my real life.
What do you think of first when scripting your plots? In other words, do you have a creative process?
Well, there is no one way. Sometimes it’s a character, sometimes it’s a location, sometimes it’s a plot point, but eventually it doesn’t matter how you begin. What matters is that eventually all things must being to fall in sync.
Because if at some point you don’t start to funnel it down to one thing, then it’s just a bunch of pages that make no sense. So, making a film is like having a puzzle that you are picking the pieces of, and you are trying to join them to turn them into something. It’s not necessary that they will come together and sing. Your job as a storyteller is to keep holding onto them and finding how to connect them. You’re connecting pieces as they come to you. And as you do that, you can slowly start seeing shapes and then a picture, and then hopefully a bigger picture that comes together.
You also lend your mind to advertisements, and you recently produced Searching for Sheela. Considering the different genres you work with, how do you stay in the zone with each project?
Oh, that’s a wonderful question. And, I have a funny analogy to this. I look at filmmaking sometimes like cricket, and I think you’ve got to play different formats to stay on top of your game. You’ve got to stay on your toes. And sometimes you’re playing the twenty-twenty format, so you’re trying to tell a story in thirty seconds or a minute; that has its little challenges and its little toolkit. And then I switched to documentary, which was a whole new ball game. And that is extremely restrictive in one way, but also extremely challenging in terms of building a narrative because there’s just a bunch of things that are not in your control, but you must give it shape and a spine. And feature films for me is just like a test cricket match. It’s not instantly rewarding. It’s something that needs patience, discipline and everything may change on day five. So, you’ve got to stick with it and stay on the field. And hopefully, at one point, you’d be like yes, I can see that there is light at the end of the tunnel.
A feature for me is somehow most rewarding. I do want to venture into longer format, which I think would be actual test cricket as you’re doing a ten-hour series or an eight-hour series. Characters have more time to grow and evolve. I genuinely don’t know how long I will be making movies, especially relevant movies. So while I think my mind and heart are in the right place, I want to do a little bit of everything. And it’s so rewarding. I wouldn’t want to do just one thing. I love myself on an ad set. I love myself on a movie set, and I want to keep changing. And if it goes into virtual reality, I want to make a virtual reality film. I’m not stopping as far as I can learn the technique. I want to keep going.
This article is an all exclusive from our February EZ. To read more such articles, follow the link here.
Text Hansika Lohani Mehtani
Date 14-02-2022